Free

“The Free Technology Academy publishes all its educational materials, including the course books, under free licenses on the web.”
Unfortunately, and this trend seems to be building their materials are being redistributed by TradePub in association with Linux Questions in a less than savory way. I have had to refer several Linux distributors to the GPL licencing site. So TradePub and Linux Questions allow me to help with this problem;
You cannot just take things and claim them as your own, which bit do you not understand ?

I had just been reading an article at http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/shareware.html when I came across Zorin O/S being sold on Ebay, nothing wrong with that until you look at the conditions. So as I see it the producers of Zorin O/S and probably many more are in violation of the requirement not to restrict access to software unless a fee is paid. Notice how Zorin require another donation if you want to update to the latest release..
From their website;

“How much does Zorin OS cost and how do I get it?

The Core, Lite and Educational versions are available to download for free from the Free download page. The Premium versions (Business, Gaming, Multimedia and Ultimate) are available in exchange for a donation on the Premium page for a physical DVD or a download. ”

“If I got an older version of one of the Zorin OS Premium releases would I get a free upgrade to the newer version?

You will have to either donate for a new physical DVD from the Premium page or a Download of it (see above) to upgrade to a newer version of your Premium release. “

Kristen thinks that businesses will be persuaded to use the “cloud” to save money on software but if the business is using a lot of FREE/Open Source software the financial element won’t be as persuading.

I’m getting fed up with this, I am starting to read BS everywhere regarding Linux, the trouble is there are too many idiots out there who don’t care what Linux is about as long as they can spam you with some rubbish (http://unix.org.in for instance or http://i486.net/category/unix/).Let me clear up a couple of things for you if you have had the misfortune to go to websites like that;Linux is NOT Windows – If someone tells you it is they do not know Linux,Quote “There are same sort of virus’s for Linux as there are for Windows” – No, there isn’t, virus’s for Linux are very rare and you would have to go out of your way to infect your machine.Microsoft DO NOT make any form of Linux so “XP 2010 7 Linux” is probably just a scam. iPod Linux is also just an excuse to use iPod in the webpage tag’s. The real site’s to trust regarding Linux would be site’s like – http://www.unix.org/ – http://www.linux.org/ – http://www.linux.com/ – http://www.linuxquestions.org/ etc.

There have been a couple of occasions when I have been told of someone having a bad experience when asking for help with a Linux distribution or program, it’s certainly unfortunate if it puts people off the FREE software community in general, so, think carefully before shouting at a “noob” for being stupid, we all started out with a little knowledge that we have built on, lets not forget that.

HOWEVER

I came across this excellent article by Eric Raymond that might help these new users understand how to get the best response when asking questions in forum’s etc. and you could refer some of these “noobs” or “newbies” to this article.

I’m not a football fan but I think this article regarding Oldham Athletics 600% increase for playing extracts of music when a goal is scored might be relevant to the whole FREE software or Creative Commons concept.This obsession with royalties really beggars belief sometimes. I can appreciate as an artist you might like to be rewarded for your work but would you really expect to be paid every time a goal is scored and a snippet of your song is used? Each time that snippet of music is used it boosts the popularity of you the artist establishing you more in peoples minds, this in turn no doubt leads to increased sales of your work, something i’m sure you respect. So why the PRS wants to try and ruin it by increasing the fees 600% ! I have no idea, it’s just stupidity.So here we go once again, I do know why they have done it, its about MONEY. Its not really about the artist, its not really about the football match, its not even really about the music, its about a big business wanting to be bigger in its quest for domination in the market. Wether or not you agree with the PRS seems irrelevant now as all they are doing is making themselves look completley out of touch, imposing this unfair increase and having no regard or understanding for the situation is not doing them any favours at all. However with any luck this will produce a negative portrayal of the PRS and may well have an interesting effect, ie: they will start LOSING MONEY, yes, bet they understood that.Stupid stupid people, PRS you scored an OWN GOAL.

Open Milton – View TextsThe complete works of John Milton have been assembled to celebrate his 400th birthday ! You can use the work in various ways maybe just reading it or printing off copies for others to read or perhaps just play with statistics and analyze the text for word counts.Besides the obvious Paradise Lost there is also a work called Areopagitica. It starts with a quote that caught my attention straight away;

<br />This is true liberty, when free-born men,</pre> <pre id="7">Having to advise the public, may speak free,</pre> <pre id="8">Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise;</pre> <pre id="9">Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace:</pre> <pre id="11">What can be juster in a state than this? </pre> <pre id="12"> Euripid. Hicetid.

I came across this site whilst searching the web for more info. on Robert Luxemberg the film maker, as I would like to see his film “Madeleine” (probably spelt wrong) about images we cannot own. In it pictures of unattainable women flash by on screen, but it’s not just the women we can never “have” but also the images themselves, they will never be ours. It was referenced in “Steal This Film 2” but I cannot locate it any where else.If any body could provide a link please do.

I’ve been watching Google evolve over the years from a humble search engine to a, well, I was going to say “mammoth size jack of all trades” but they are a bit more specialised than that. When I came across gOS last year and found people jokingly referring to it as Google operating system I realised it wouldn’t be long before Google did just that, made their own version of an operating system, and there was a good chance it was going to be based on FREE software. Any way I found this article over at Techrepublic very interesting and would have to agree with most of what is said there, take a look and have a vote while your there. I said YES if your interested, even knowing that what I say here, now, might live to haunt me for ever 🙂